David Friedman, Andy O’Rourke catch Frisbee fever

Wait a sec – it is, in a way, when it comes to David Friedman and his dad, Tom.

“My dad played ultimate at Dartmouth, so I decided not to do track in college,” said David Friedman, a freshman at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. “I figured I might as well do the same thing he did and try out.”

David is a former Old Rochester Regional High School varsity cross country and track star from Marion.

Friedman’s father played ultimate at Dartmouth before graduating in 1985. David is on the Dartmouth team that competed against 19 other schools in the 2013 USA Ultimate Division 1 College Open Championships in Madison, Wis., this past month.

Dartmouth won three and lost three, getting eliminated last Sunday with a 14-12, quarterfinal-round loss to the University of Central Florida. Friedman’s team had beaten Georgia and Washington on Friday and Texas on Saturday, and lost to Oregon and Colorado the same Saturday.

Another athlete from Marion, former Tabor Academy high jumper Andy O’Rourke, is a freshman on the Harvard University team that also competed in the Div. 1 Open games.

Harvard went 2-3 in Madison, beating Cornell and Florida State, and losing to Wisconsin, Carleton College of Northfield, Minn., and the University of North Carolina. They were ousted by UNC in the pre-quarter round.

Pittsburgh defeated Central Florida, 15-8, in the May 27th final and won the Div. 1 Open title.

The semifinals and final were televised on ESPN3.

“We played Central Florida pretty close,” Friedman noted, “so it’s kind of cool knowing we did well against a good team that made it to the championship final.”

Ultimate is a club sport, not varsity, with USA Ultimate not NCAA-connected. But Dartmouth and Harvard each allows plenty of field space for games and practice sessions.

O’Rourke and Friedman went to elementary and middle school together, were friends then and still are, despite the different educational paths they chose afterwards. Ultimate is their common bond now.

When Tom Friedman played Frisbee at Dartmouth in the 1980s, David said, “it was not as serious as it is now. He just kind of messed around a little bit with it. He passed it on to me.”

David Friedman was at Madison Memorial Day weekend, but he couldn’t compete. He has had mononucleosis for three months and has been able to participate only “off and on,” he said, during that time. It was an “off” period for Friedman during the playoffs, but he joined some injured players and cheered for his healthy teammates.

“It was a bummer” missing the nationals, he said, “but maybe next year,” should Dartmouth qualify again.

Dartmouth and Harvard earned their national berths through a series of sectional and regional tournaments. New England qualified those two teams among the 20 that competed in the Wisconsin tournament.

A distance runner (two-mile, mile, 880) while at Old Rochester, Friedman said he misses track and field but he does endurance running. Sometimes it’s with a group, more often it’s on his own.

Part of Friedman’s attraction to ultimate is that “it’s really kind of laid back,” he said. “Everybody’s a lot more friendly than in a lot of other sports, so that’s pretty cool.”

Dartmouth had a 24-player roster this past season, with seven players competing at a time against seven on the opposing team. First-year players tend to focus on defense, but as they get deeper into the sport, they pick up the nuances of offense.

“I love to play defense,” O’Rourke said. “It’s a lot of fun. I love to stop opponents from catching the disc.”

Harvard also counted 24 players on its ‘A’ team roster, and with others making up the ‘B’ squad, about 40 players are in the program. “It’s getting big,” O’Rourke said.

Height is helpful in ultimate, so, at 6-1, 165, Friedman has an edge on some opponents.

“Andy (O’Rourke, 5-9, 145) can jump pretty well,” Friedman said, “so he makes up for his lack of height.”

O’Rourke turned to ultimate last fall when he didn’t make the Harvard track and field team.

“When I came to Harvard, I had never played ultimate before,” O’Rourke said. “I had just played really casual pickup. So after I didn’t make the track team, I wanted to play a sport. A friend of mine played ultimate, so I tried out and made the ‘B’ team.”

Later, he was invited to an ‘A’ team tryout, he made it, went to the nationals with that team and the rest is history in the making.

“I knew nothing about the sport beforehand,” O’Rourke said, “but it’s been a really great experience learning. I didn’t know any of the rules. I had to learn a backhand and a flick. But the great thing is a lot of kids on my team played it in high school and they’ve been fantastic about teaching it.”

Some of his friends don’t know the lengths to which collegiate ultimate players go to compete and improve their skill, but O’Rourke is quick to set the record straight.

“Every once in a while people say, ‘Oh, you play pickup,’ but the people I play with are serious about it,” he said. “They know it’s a legitimate, up-and-coming sport. They’re all very committed to the sport. They all work hard for each other. My family and some of my friends think it’s pretty cool and now they follow it at Harvard.”

O’Rourke is not sure what career path he’ll take. His interests are engineering, pre-med, neurobiology, and genetics. Med school is a distinct possibility.

Friedman’s concentration is chemistry and math modified with computer science.

Where those studies will take them ultimately is not yet clear, but, for now, their concentration in sports is very clear – it’s the ultimate sport.

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